She's Got Street Smarts

Meet the power players in the money business. By the way, they're all women

With the economy seeming more in flux and confusing than ever, we're all searching for answers. Dealbreaker.com editor Bess Levin picks the money-minded pros at the center of it all—trading, banking, regulating, and reporting—to tell you what you need to know. Did we happen to mention they're all women?

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The Anchor: Becky Quick

As of 2007, CNBC's Squawk Box coanchor Becky Quick had spoken to Warren Buffett only briefly at his annual meeting. Interviewing him on the phone that same year and knowing he had an imminent trip to China, she boldly asked, "Can I come?"

"There was this long pause," she says. "He's so nice, he probably felt bad saying no." On the flight over, they had a 12-hour conversation, and now she's one of the Berkshire Hathaway founder's go-to reporters, giving Quick dibs on Buffett-related news breaks.

After spending close to a decade at the Wall Street Journal, where Quick was "put through the paces on how to write about finance," an opportunity arose for a TV gig at CNBC. Now a coanchor on one of the network's highest-rated shows, 38-year-old Quick is known for asking insightful questions of formidable characters, including former treasury secretary Hank Paulson and BlackRock's Larry Fink. How does she quell on-air jitters? "I always have a pen in my hand, even if I don't have paper," she says. "It's my security blanket."

courtesy of NBC

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She’s Got Street Smarts

She’s Got Street Smarts

The Analyst: Meredith Whitney

What was Meredith Whitney's first big break on Wall Street? Getting reassigned to another boss. The equity research analyst, famous for downgrading Citigroup in 2007, suspects her then 40-year-old superior thought Whitney, then 23 and a recent Brown grad, wanted his job at Oppenheimer & Co. Regardless of the reason, the move allowed Whitney to take a position with legendary financial services analyst Steve Eisman. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me," Whitney says.

Married to former professional wrestler John Layfield, Whitney was eventually named a managing director at Oppenheimer, where she covered banks and brokers and made her bold call on Citi (predicting correctly that the bank would have to stop paying dividends to shareholders) almost a year before the height of the financial crisis, which garnered her media attention and death threats. In 2009, Whitney founded her own research firm, Meredith Whitney Advisory Group, and made another controversial prediction in late 2010: that as many as 50 to 100 cities in the U.S. may default on their municipal bonds in the next 18 months. ("The math was there," she says.)

As someone who has withstood attacks from colleagues and strangers, Whitney offers some simple advice to anyone starting out on the Street: "Don't stick with something that you don't like," she says. "The money is never worth it if you go to a firm that destroys your soul."

As of 2007, CNBC's Squawk Box coanchor Becky Quick had spoken to Warren Buffett only briefly at his annual meeting. Interviewing him on the phone that same year and knowing he had an imminent trip to China, she boldly asked, "Can I come?"

"There was this long pause," she says. "He's so nice, he probably felt bad saying no." On the flight over, they had a 12-hour conversation, and now she's one of the Berkshire Hathaway founder's go-to reporters, giving Quick dibs on Buffett-related news breaks.

After spending close to a decade at the Wall Street Journal, where Quick was "put through the paces on how to write about finance," an opportunity arose for a TV gig at CNBC. Now a coanchor on one of the network's highest-rated shows, 38-year-old Quick is known for asking insightful questions of formidable characters, including former treasury secretary Hank Paulson and BlackRock's Larry Fink. How does she quell on-air jitters? "I always have a pen in my hand, even if I don't have paper," she says. "It's my security blanket."

courtesy of NBC

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She’s Got Street Smarts

The Analyst: Meredith Whitney

What was Meredith Whitney's first big break on Wall Street? Getting reassigned to another boss. The equity research analyst, famous for downgrading Citigroup in 2007, suspects her then 40-year-old superior thought Whitney, then 23 and a recent Brown grad, wanted his job at Oppenheimer & Co. Regardless of the reason, the move allowed Whitney to take a position with legendary financial services analyst Steve Eisman. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me," Whitney says.

Married to former professional wrestler John Layfield, Whitney was eventually named a managing director at Oppenheimer, where she covered banks and brokers and made her bold call on Citi (predicting correctly that the bank would have to stop paying dividends to shareholders) almost a year before the height of the financial crisis, which garnered her media attention and death threats. In 2009, Whitney founded her own research firm, Meredith Whitney Advisory Group, and made another controversial prediction in late 2010: that as many as 50 to 100 cities in the U.S. may default on their municipal bonds in the next 18 months. ("The math was there," she says.)

As someone who has withstood attacks from colleagues and strangers, Whitney offers some simple advice to anyone starting out on the Street: "Don't stick with something that you don't like," she says. "The money is never worth it if you go to a firm that destroys your soul."

Getty

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She’s Got Street Smarts

The Bankers: Kelly Coffey and Alice Wang

In the über-competitive world of investment banking, moving up the ranks is not a certainty—nor is becoming a "lifer" in an industry whose burnout rate is unquestionably high. But this is not the case for Kelly Coffey and Alice Wang. Coffey, who heads Diversified Industries Investment Banking at J.P. Morgan, has been with the bank for 20 years, after taking a job out of grad school for what she thought would be a quick stint. Wang, who joined J.P. Morgan 25 years ago, was the first female of Asian descent in sales and trading to become an investment-banking managing director and now runs the Cross Asset Class Marketing and Solutions group.

Both women recall their early years as frenetic. There was much to learn and challenges were generously doled out, but both thrived in high-pressure situations. Early in her career, Coffey traveled constantly throughout Europe, the U.S., and South America; Wang says she was given "a tremendous amount of responsibility" and often felt she was "living under a microscope a lot of the time" as one of the few women on the trading floor in those days. The pair credit their success to J.P. Morgan's meritocratic culture and senior management, and in particular to supporting women, who Wangs says are "culture carriers of the firm."

Brandon Leger

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She’s Got Street Smarts

The Reporter: Bethany McLean

Before she became one of the most respected reporters on business, Bethany McLean was working in business. "It was a tough experience," McLean says of her three-year stint as a Goldman Sachs investment-banking analyst. Having always wanted to be a journalist, at 24 she left Goldman for Fortune, where she went on to write a series of articles about Enron and coauthored the best-seller The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron.

In the years since, she has been getting unprecedented access (like face time with top brass at Goldman Sachs) and penned another book with The New York Times columnist Joe Nocera. All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis examines how bank executives, subprime mortgage lenders, and former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan helped bring the economy to its knees. "I expect more of business and its players because it's tied to everything we do," she says. "I understand the transformative power of business to do good."

Steven Laxton

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She’s Got Street Smarts

The Soothsayer: Abby Joseph Cohen

In 1998, BusinessWeek dubbed Goldman Sachs' senior investment strategist Abby Joseph Cohen "The Prophet of Wall Street." Over a decade later, armed with a venerable partner title, the description is still apt and possibly more deserved. In an era when financial punditry and pop economists have proliferated like mad, Cohen, who spent some time as an economist at the Federal Reserve before joining Goldman, has remained a calm voice, taking a macro approach to her analysis that also gets at deeper socioeconomic issues. One of her current predictions? That the unemployment rate—partially a product of the recession, partially a product of "disparities in the U.S. educational system"—will remain high until "U.S. policymakers and private employers make an effort to reeducate American workers."

courtesy of Goldman Sachs

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She’s Got Street Smarts

The Moneymaker: Reneé Haugerud

In the hedge fund industry, the percentage of assets managed by women is a drop in the male-dominated bucket. But Reneé Haugerud, founder of global macro commodities fund Galtere Ltd., the largest female-helmed firm with assets of over $1 billion, is doing her part to change that.

Growing up in southeastern Minnesota, Haugerud says she first became interested in trading at the age of five, when her father taught her about commodity futures. "He flew me up over the neighboring cornfields and talked about buying and selling crops," Haugerud recalls. "From that point on, I was hooked." Haugerud went on to spend 13 years at agricultural mega-giant Cargill. She then traded for NatWest Markets and founded Galtere in 1997 after concluding that she could "bring something different to the conversation," having observed that many managers overanalyzed data, whereas she favored a less complicated approach. (One of the firm's guiding principles: "Simple is smart.")

So far, her way is profitable; the fund is said to have gained 12.6 percent annually since 1999. As for the hedge fund industry's lack of female managers, Haugerud says it's "very hard to get a fund started unless you happen to be plugged into a network of seed investors, and few women have that kind of access. But women need to do more to encourage other women in this business. Men learned that lesson a long time ago; we need to recognize that we are, in no small measure, responsible for many of the obstacles we face."

Kate Drew Miller

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She’s Got Street Smarts

The Rethinker: Daryl Collins

"Savvy money managers" isn't a description usually attributed to the poor populations of South Africa—unless you read Bankable Frontier senior associate Daryl Collins' research, which reveals that many of those living on $2 a day have more discipline to budget than those far wealthier.

A graduate of the London School of Economics who once worked as an emerging-market equity strategist on Wall Street, Collins and her team studied 180 families in South Africa from 2003 to 2004, asking them questions about their spending (Did they buy food last Thursday?) in order to "track the money as it flowed in and out of the house," she says. Their findings, which Collins contributed to 2009's Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day, showed that the moneyless have an incredible ability to manage their funds, but find it difficult to save for longer than a year. Collins is advocating change at the government and business level, arguing that banks should develop financial services that fit the needs of the poor. Next up? A financial diary to find out what poverty really looks like in this country.

courtesy of Daryl Collins

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She’s Got Street Smarts

The (Potential) Fixer: Mary Schapiro

Mary Schapiro was named Barack Obama's nominee for chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 18, 2008—less than two weeks after Bernie Madoff admitted to running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme that was able to flourish, in large part, due to the incompetence of the SEC.

In the years since, despite no further embarrassing revelations of Madoff-size scams, the critics and skepticism have continued. The SEC's most talked-about move was a now-settled lawsuit against Goldman Sachs in April, which accused them of misleading investors during the housing crisis. Many believed the suit was politically motivated, and rather than cut to the causes of the crisis, was put on for show. Now with the Dodd–Frank financial reform bill emboldening the powers of the SEC, all eyes will be on Schapiro to see if real change takes place.